Official blog of the Greater Sacramento Progressive Alliance, one of the largest and most vibrant progressive activist groups in California with more than 7,000 members. We mobilize Progressives in Sacramento, the surrounding foothill areas, and at Sac State and Folsom Lake College.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Bay Area Victories for Living Wage

by Seth Sandronsky,

On Tuesday San Francisco
voters approved by a 77 to 23 percent margin Proposition J, which
will increase the city’s minimum wage from the current $10.74 per hour to
$12.25 per hour by May 1, 2015. The city’s minimum wage would climb to $13 per
hour by July 2016; to $14 per hour by July 2017 and $15 per hour by July 2018.

“Prop. J will provide a
much needed raise to $15 per hour for 140,000 of the lowest paid workers in our
city,” Gordon Mar, executive director of Jobs with
Justice, San Francisco, told Capital &
Main. “Prop. J will also raise the bar nationally for minimum wage
policies.”

The “Fight for $15” to
gain a higher minimum wage for workers began in Seattle, Washington. Voters
there, with Socialist Alternative city council member Kshama Sawant
spearheading a grassroots movement, approved phased-in hikes to the minimum
wage, eventually reaching $15 per hour, this year. That momentum in no small
way encouraged people in U.S. cities such as San Francisco and Oakland to vote
for increasing the pay of low-wage service workers to $15 per hour in this
year’s midterm elections.

In San Francisco, Prop. J
includes an index for the minimum wage to keep pace with cost-of-living
increases, or the rise in consumer prices, as Social Security does. That
provision could help to lessen the severe affordability crisis of rental
housing in the Bay Area, where economic security for low-wage workers remains
elusive, according to Mar.

Across the bay in Oakland,
81 percent of the voters approved Measure FF to raise the hourly minimum wage
of up to 48,000 workers to $12.25 an hour from California’s
current minimum of $9 per hour by March 2, 2015. Like San Francisco’
Prop. J, Measure FF is indexed to the annual rate of inflation.

Measure FF also mandates
that employers provide their minimum-wage employees with up to nine days of
paid sick leave coverage per year, which San Francisco law already provides.

“Receiving pay when ill
and unable to work helps immensely,” Burger King
security officer John Jones, 40, said in a phone interview. “I
missed five days of work due to a sickness earlier this year, lost all that
pay, and am still recovering.”

With this new pay raise of
$2.25 scheduled to take effect next March, Jones’ living standards will
improve, he said. Now his family will be able to wash laundry once a week
versus every two weeks, pay down debt and eat better quality food.

“From my perspective this
is just a good first step in Oakland,” said Dan Siegel, a civil rights attorney
and Oakland mayoral candidate who finished in fifth place with 12 percent of
the vote. “Growing income inequality is the most critical issue facing U.S.
society, and efforts to raise the minimum wage in San Francisco, Oakland and
other cities show that people in the U.S. are ready to address the issue.”

Consider this: “The real
minimum wage (adjusted for inflation) is lower today than it was in 1956 during
Eisenhower’s first administration,” writes John Bellamy Foster in the Monthly Review.
Real wages measure what
workers can buy with their pay.

In Alaska, Arkansas,
Nebraska and South Dakota, citizens voted on ballot initiatives to approve
increasing the minimum wage incrementally. In Illinois, voters approved an
advisory measure to hike the state minimum wage.

Alaska’s minimum wage
would climb from $7.75 per hour to $8.75 on January 1, 2015. In Arkansas, the
state’s minimum wage of $6.25 per hour rises to $7.50 per hour on January 1,
2015. Nebraska voters approved increasing the state minimum wage from $7.25 per
hour to $8 on January 1, 2015. In South Dakota, voters approved upping the
state minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to $8.50 on January 1, 2015.

After a deep recession and
a weak recovery, American workers need a raise. Tuesday’s passage of minimum
wage increases across the U.S. is proof that voters are ready and willing to
make that happen.

Reprinted from Capitol and Main

Seth Sandronsky is a Sacramento journalist and member of the freelancers
unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, which is a local office of the
Newspaper Guild, a part of the Communications Workers of America.

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Welcome to the PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE. We are a multi-racial, multi-issue "rainbow coalition" dedicated to social justice, peace and building progressive power. Our key priorities include economic justice; equal rights and equal opportunities for all regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation; international solidarity; humanitarian service; eradicating poverty at home and abroad; environmental protection and sustainable development; and electing progressives to public office and then holding them accountable.

Founded in 2005, we have grown to more than 7,000 members and have emerged as one of the largest and most grassroots activist groups in California. We are proud to serve as a local chapter Our Revolution, the national movement inspired by Bernie Sanders' historic 2016 Presidential Campaign, and as a local affiliate of United for Peace & Justice (UFPJ), a network of several hundred peace and justice groups from all over the world.

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